For more than two decades, A&E’s long-running documentary series “The First 48” has followed homicide detectives through the critical early hours of a murder investigation, and Mobile has become one of the show’s regular filming locations. Camera crews shadow Mobile Police Department detectives as they process crime scenes, interview witnesses and close in on suspects, with episodes often airing well before those same suspects ever set foot in a courtroom.
That timeline has become the center of a growing dispute between local defense attorneys and the police department that grants the show access. Attorneys say airing interrogations, 911 calls and surveillance footage on national television before a case goes to trial can shape public opinion in ways that are difficult to undo, regardless of what a jury ultimately hears in court.
The concern is not hypothetical for Mobile defense attorney Chase Dearman, whose client, Frederick Knight Jr., appeared in a First 48 episode that aired just over two weeks before Knight was scheduled to stand trial on a murder charge. Dearman said he did not learn his client had been featured until a reporter told him, and he described the episode’s framing as devastating to Knight’s presumption of innocence.
“They’re saying things that are really damning toward your client,” said Andrea Ramey, describing the tone of the broadcast.
Dearman pushed back on the idea that the show’s dramatic framing amounts to a verdict. “That’s entertainment. That is nothing more than a TV show. It is not a trial. He has not been proven guilty. As a matter of fact, he is presumed innocent,” he said. He added that watching the episode air was “horrified actually, because that does nothing but poison the jury pool.”
Much of the attorneys’ frustration centers on the level of access the production receives compared to everyone else covering a crime scene, including local media. While reporters and bystanders are typically held behind police tape, First 48 camera crews have been allowed to move in close to victims and evidence in ways that go well beyond standard press access. The show also broadcasts material that rarely reaches the public otherwise, including police interrogation footage, 911 recordings and surveillance video pulled directly from active investigations.
That access appears to run only in one direction. Requests for the same investigative material that has already aired publicly on the show have been denied by police on the grounds that the underlying cases remain pending trial, a policy that defense attorneys say highlights an uneven standard between what a television audience can see and what the public and press are told.
Defense attorney Jason Darley said the danger lies less in what jurors ultimately hear in the courtroom and more in what they may have already absorbed from a television screen months earlier. “Some of what they hear may not be admissible in court. Some of what they hear may not be relevant at all to the case,” Darley said. “If people make up their minds beforehand, it can be problematic.”
Prosecutors and police in Mobile reject the idea that the show compromises a defendant’s right to a fair trial. Mobile County District Attorney Ashley Rich said the jury selection process is specifically designed to weed out prospective jurors who have already formed opinions about a case, regardless of how they came to have them.
“It’s not tainting our jury pool,” Rich said, pointing to the standard vetting process used before any trial begins, in which potential jurors are asked directly whether they know anything about the case. “We certainly don’t want anyone who serves on jury duty to have some kind of preconceived notion about a case, and so if they do, then they are asked not to serve,” she said.
The debate over pretrial publicity generated by true-crime programming is not unique to Mobile. In 2018, city leaders in Miami approved a $1.3 million settlement with Taiwan Smart, who had been wrongly accused of murder in an episode of The First 48, a case that defense attorneys elsewhere have since pointed to as evidence of the risks the format can create for defendants.
Dearman argued that the stakes go beyond any single case. “To film something in such a manner and to release it prior to trial, it cannot be said that it does not infringe upon his right to a fair trial, which is the most fundamental aspect of our constitution,” he said.
Questions about how Mobile Police Department leadership weighs those concerns against the access it grants to the production remain largely unanswered. The department’s chief has not agreed to an on-camera interview addressing the show’s presence in the city, and the debate over where entertainment ends and due process begins is likely to resurface each time a new episode airs ahead of a Mobile County trial.